Good evening. I’ve been following this forum for over a year and I’ve noticed a trend among the posters. It boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding of carbohydrates. This is a simple diet to follow. If you consume 800 calories per day, you will lose weight regardless of what you eat. But as I understand it the goal is to avoid carbohydrates. This means no bread. No pasta. No potatoes.

You need to forget what you believe. You’ve been mislead by what you think you know. Consuming fat does not make you fat. Consuming “low fat” products does not help you. Fat is not your enemy. Consuming sugar and carbohydrates in excessive quantities contributes to weight gain. There are the same thing. Carbohydrates are complex hyrdocarbons that break down in your body into simple sugars that contribute to weight gain. If you want to lose weight, minimise your sugar intake, in any form. Sugar is as addictive as heroin. It activates the same pathways in your brain. It’s incredibly difficult to give up.

It’s not all bad news. There are plenty of delicious foods that can help you to avoid sugar in large quantities. You can’t avoid it completely, you need sugar to stay alive. You need it but you can teach your body to run on the energy that you’ve already stored in the form of fat. That’s the point of this diet. To lose fat by using it as your energy.

This diet asks you to enter a state of ketosis. That is, asking you to not consume sugar for three weeks, in any form. That includes carbohydrates. At all. None. No cheating. No bread. No hot cross buns. No sour dough. No wholemeal wraps. No scotch eggs. No cheeky portion of chips. If you cheat, you’ve blown it. You start again.

It’s hard to start with but it’s only for a few days. It gets easier the more you learn about alternative recipes. If you have to eat chocolate at Easter, maybe that’s more important to you than losing weight. Maybe finding an excuse to eat whatever you find delightful is more important to you than losing weight.

That’s entirely your choice but if you’re on this forum, you’re entirely missing the point.

Wow, that’s an interesting first post!
And not quite in the spirit of this forum either, to be honest. I’ll take the bait.
You wrote:
This diet asks you to enter a state of ketosis. That is, asking you to not consume sugar for three weeks, in any form. That includes carbohydrates. At all. None. No cheating. No bread. No hot cross buns. No sour dough. No wholemeal wraps. No scotch eggs. No cheeky portion of chips. If you cheat, you’ve blown it. You start again.
Maybe finding an excuse to eat whatever you find delightful is more important to you than losing weight.

This is not a 3-week diet, lose some weight and go back to how you were before. For most people on here this is a change in their whole way of eating and way of life, and many do it for the health benefits of reversing pre-diabetes, high BP, managing T2 diabetes etc. It’s not all about weight loss.
It’s not 1 meal off plan you’ve blown it either – that is not helpful for people needing support and encouragement to improve their health.
So we’ll carry on supporting each other on the threads, and if you feel you have anything other than judgement to offer, feel free to drop by.

Hi Laura.
I’m sure you didn’t set out to sound condescending, but reading this as someone who did struggle with the temptation of easter eggs, your message did feel like that. I don’t think anyone on here fails to understand that easter eggs or other delights are bad for us. This might as you say be a simple diet, but that is not the same as saying it is an easy one. And it’s harder for some than for others. I like to think the people on here try their very best to do something that is very hard and sometimes we fail. Not because we don’t understand the principles of the diet but because staying away from sugar is incredibly hard and life gets in the way. So we fall short, we feel bad about it and when we do we post it on here to get the support and encouragement we need to pick ourselves up and make the next day a better one. In my mind that is the real power of this forum.
Britta

Hello welcome and wow. What a first post. I thought long and hard before replying.

In a few respects I get where you are coming from. For me personally I’ve stuck to the way of eating for 16 months now with fabulous success. I have recommended the diet to a few friends and family and seen varying degrees of success. Usually related to how well they’ve stuck to the principles.

I’ve not judged. Everyone is different. Has different priorities and levels of self discipline. Everybody’s mind works differently. I’ve not found things easy but I’ve resisted temptation, it’s not so easy for some people and I make allowances for this.

I see some of the motivation and encouragement threads. They aren’t for me so I just don’t take part. I offer advice in other threads when I can.

A couple of points. This diet isn’t about achieving Ketosis. It’s about eating good fats, protein and to an extent only allowing good unprocessed carbs into the diet, steering clear of processed carbs, starchy foods and sugars. Fat and protein keeps you feeling full for longer so you can eat less. There is also a feedback loop where the body can’t access fat reserves when your insulin levels are up – which occurs when a sugar spike occurs in your blood.

Additionally you have to consider the Fast 800 diet is less strict about Carbohydrate intake focussing more on Time Restricted Eating.

Remember everyone is different, they have different things going on which makes their ability to resist temptation harder than it maybe for me or you, maybe they need a little guidance on some of those borderline foods that some people can get away with, others can’t (porridge anyone?). If everyone found it easy to understand and stick to the rules their wouldn’t be any need for this forum.

So maybe it’s you that’s missing the point.

LauraAF, your post sounds as though you have read the philosophy of this diet. We know fat is not bad for us, we know that anything advertised as low fat or low sugar is just chemically enhanced food or, full of sugars or carbs to give flavour and fullness, we know we have to eat protein, we all know about ketosis. I know that sometimes the matra of a low carb diet can harp on about sugars as if it is just one thing, a white crystalline substance you put in coffee or use to make cakes and biscuits. We know it is also called sucrose, maltose, fructose, dextrose, galactose, glucose etc etc. Some people think going low carb is cutting out those types of sugars and being good by not having a packet of biscuits with their now non sweetened coffee is a good diet. But we know what carbs are, we know they turn to sugar in the blood and how they interact and the process of insulin resitance, glycogen storage and so on. Many of use know that this is a way of life. I personally never (or very rarely) knowingly eat a starchy carb like cereal, bread, potato, pasta, rice as I am diabetic and I can see the results the following morning in my blood sugar readings.

I also know that some people just want to lose a few pounds to get into a certain dress, go on holiday, wear a bikini and that is okay with us. We dont judge people on this site. We are all aiming for some of the same things. Weight loss, good health and feeling better about ourselves. I also know that we are human and included in Maslows heirachy of needs is 1. breathing, eating and drinking to keep us alive at a basic level. But we have evolved from that and now include having pleasure in eating and drinking which means sometimes having something that doesnt exactly fulful the need for food or drink but just tastes nice or gives us pleasure. Excuse us for wanting a glass of wine, chocolate cake or an Easter egg now and then. WE ARE HUMAN.

We dont need you to come along and tell us we dont know what we are doing. I think you should set up your own dieting site with your obviously newly found philosophy, which you seem to have stolen from Dr Fung, Dr Mosley, Prof Roy Taylor et al, and go and patronise some other group of people. I really think you are on the wrong site.

LauraAF. I am very surprised you have taken the dogmatic tone with us as I have just read your profile which says your are a ‘dedicated healthy eater who believes that rules are meant to be tweaked’. So it is okay to have a cheeky Easter egg then.

Looking at the time of the original post, I am half expecting a link to another website/book/sales pitch from another time zone far far away.

Yes Ruby I expected some sort of sales pitch but we dont put up with those either. Maybe one or two too many shandies.

I feel guilty taking the bait.

We’ll see what transpires overnight.

In my humble opinion, the original postvon this thread was designed to be provocative and throw a cat amongst the pigeons. My suggestion is not to give it any air.